August 5, 2009
No wonder why Roman, Latin and Ottoman empires chose to build strong presence at Byzantine or Constantine or as we say today- Istanbul! It’s a city with unique geography, heritage, culture and beauty that even today people from almost every nation come and rule. Yes, they rule their time spent as a tourist! With rich history of Ancient Greek, the establishment of New Rome (Nova Roma), 600 years of Sultans (Ottoman) and liberation in 20th century- all made this city a living history. Istanbul’s culture is as vast as its history too. Thus the city of Istanbul was chosen to be the ‘European Capital of Culture 2010’.
At the first impression, the city seems to be heaven for few professionals to be wow! It’s heave for architects to see how transformation and co-existence of different architecture built the city. Alongside, how rich history has also been the rationale of shaping Istanbul. And when history is rich, there has to be an interest from many professionals. For today, putting aside the history and architecture, let’s just talk about how it feels now to be a visitor in Istanbul for couple of days.
We landed in Istanbul and were received by an unexpected gift from the season. The afternoon city was dressed in tulips of every color and shape. The deep blue water of the Sea, the skyline of famous mosques and palace created breathtaking views by the road.
We had so much to see and in so little time! A little research on what to see & how to see made our two days trip very worthwhile.
Since we approached Istanbul with a bulk of memories from Egypt, we decided to take the first evening slow. The street side restaurant gave the flavor of any European city. After having a late lunch (still can smell that Turkish kebap) we headed for the Galata bridge on the Bosphorus (the channel that divided the European and asian part of Istanbul), a must see place in Istanbul. There are convenient metro rail to all the important locations. Another interesting way is to travel by the ferries through the water channels. And taxis are easily available if one is not making a budget trip.
The Galata Bridge links the old part of Istanbul to the new. It has a rail & vehicle road like any other bridge but has series of restaurants at the bottom which makes the bridge unique. It’s a meeting place for people of all ages. People gather on top and enjoy waiting with a bait to catch fish. And at the same time people at the bottom wait at the restaurants for freshly cooked fish. During day time, if you just see carefully in the water- you may see thousands of jelly fishes are swimming all over. The adjacent area is so magnetic that we spent about three to four hours on the bridge, by the bridge, ‘this side’ and ‘that side’ of the bridge, not to mention ‘clicking’ was taking place in every now and then. There is a stunning fish market at one side of the bridge, where amazing fresh fishes were displayed and you can choose any to be grilled on spot. Just to mention, Istanbul has to be a favorite place for fish lovers and you just can’t resist the look of the whole fishing to grilling experience!
In the mean time we resisted ourselves from the bridge hangout for an hour to see the oldest tower of Istanbul- Galata Tower. This tower has a 360deg. view of the city. It comprises of a restaurant which arranges traditional belly dancing shows during dinner time with other Turkish cultural shows. Around this restaurant, this floor consists of the viewing deck for amazing view of Istanbul. A sunset view from the tower was worth walking up the hill for 30 minutes plus ten lira ticket each.
Istanbul’s old part is such a city, where you can find every street happening. Though there is a tram system, but if you have ample time a little bit of interest in walking, you can experience the ultimate tourist time. We stayed at the old part, thus walking down from Galata gave us added advantage to see those happening streets. You can’t resist yourself but going to the shops of amazing home decorating lights, ceramic souvenirs, goodies shop and of course the shop for famous sweets- Turkish delights! So we did a small shopping of goodies, sneak into some beautiful lighting shops (and asked if they mind if we take pictures only) and indulge ourselves with delights on our way back to hotel.
The nest morning we started our journey to the history. This was the time to see the famous places, camiis (mosques) and palace. Blue Mosque also known as Sultanahmet Camii (Sultan Ahmed Mosque) was on the top in our priority list of sight-seeing. As the name suggests is wrapped in intricate details of the iznic tiles. The Iznic tiles are very Turkish origin and produced as a result of modification of the Chinese porcelain. It is said that the Sultans were very fond of porcelain & hence the Turkish created Iznic tiles with a quality very close to porcelain. I apologize for my limitation of not being able to write the beauty and feelings that how beautiful it can be!
The grandeur of Aya Sophia (Hagia Sophia) makes it one of the most important buildings of architectural history. Even today the scale, the technique of setting up the dome, the openings for light, and the supports everything is considered as architectural marvel. It used to be the largest church in the world for thousand years before Seville Cathedral in Spain. Later on it was turned into a mosque during Ottoman empires but the mural of Jesus still exists on the wall of Aya Sofia. Since 1930s, this church and mosque became a museum and a witness of Roman and Ottoman era. As a second preferred places of sight-seeing, it was more than what we have expected.
After spending the half day, we have decided to plan our evening by booking tickets for Sufi Dances that has a tradition of 800 years. It’s a mix of mystic music and dance performed with the recitation from Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, which ends with a whirling dance a spiritual journey. It’s a hypnotizing experience by a group of people who practices Sufism in Turkey. Coming back to reality from the spiritual life happened through the call of our stomach, its kebap (kebab) time again.
The next morning was the last morning of our Istanbul tale. So, we chose to cover 3 other major attractions-Topkapi Palace, Grand Bazar and Bosphorus tour. Topkapi is a UNESCO world heritage site. It used to be the official residential palace for Sultans for 400 years. It was built in 1459 (initially) by Sultan Mehmed II. It used to be known as Yeni Sarayi (New Palace) but in 19th century it was named after Topkapi Gate (now lost). Once used for all royal occasion now host some amazing collection of some rare holy relics of Musilim world. Topkapi Palace contains Prophet Muhammed (pbuh)’s cloak and sword. It also kept few other prophets’ and khalifas’ swords. One of the interesting items there was the stick of Prophet Musa (since it is believed that he divided the sea with that stick). Among the other items- Prophet Muhammed’s hair, foot print and some used cascades are to be mentioned. The whole palace takes a long time to see, so just after this breathtaking experience of seeing holy relics- we have enjoyed some clicking moment with tulips and palace architecture.
Think about a market that has more than 1200 shops, 30,000 staffs, and 10+ big gates, fully covered and built in 1461 (later on extended in 17th century). It has to be the Grand Bazar of Istanbul and a must see place. It is also one of the largest and oldest markets in the world. Grand bazaar is a super bargain place. If you do not have ample time and patience for bargaining, you may just do window shopping. We were mesmerized by the shops fully loaded with different sizes of Evil Eye lockets and souvenirs. This is place is also well known for gold jewelries.
Istanbul is a very touristic city. You have all the facilities to avail in reasonable prices. So going to the Asian part through a Bosphorus journey seemed cheaper, compared to many other similar cities. There are regular ferry services that take tourist from Galata Bridge to the Asian Part of Istanbul via several key stops. You can hop in-hop off according to your choice. We have decided to be in the last point and guess made a good choice. In the April weather of Istanbul, it was a bit chilly on the Bosphorus. As our ferry was moving many beautiful building, hotels and billionaire’s villa came across. Sometime, huge Turkish red flags were just making the sights picture perfect. A big Bosphorus bridge will be on the way to Anatolia side (Asian side). Once you are close to the last destination, you will see how the channel mixes with the Black Sea (it looks blue though).
We just loved the first sight of the Asian part. Few yacht and ferries anchored around the bank and just from there open and beautifully decorated restaurants were serving freshly caught sea foods and fishes. Tourists from different countries indulging themselves with a bit of silver set noise, flavor of big yellow lemon, wine, weather and obviously the sea-side ambience. This small village has a ruin of old fort. Someday someone used to stay (sorry not to pick up the history) there and our guess was that he/she was the luckiest one of that place (maybe the staffs of the fort were too). As we walked up the hill towards the fort, looking back mistakenly once made our eyes to come off and jaws to open a bit too much. Yes, it was an amazing view of mountains and sea from the top.
Everything has a limit, so did our time to catch the ferry back to European turkey, unfortunately. After tasting one grilled fish with lemon juice and couple of chocolate ice-cream scoops our journey back passed by talking to tourists from Egypt. Looking back to back both Egypt and Turkey tour- we were thinking that every second was worth! By the way, all these are in the old part of Istanbul. But it also has a new stunning part with sky scrappers, shopping malls, modern squares and modern amenities. One of the must see from that part is Taskim Square. It’s a long road with tram line in the middle among all best brand shops from the world. Interestingly, whenever of the day you visit here, you will see thousands of people walking and walking. It’s all day full of lives mostly with young people, where we tried to cheer ourselves up as the trip was finishing the following morning. 3 days are just not enough!
Written by:
Omar Farook (Shourav)
omar.farook@hotmail.com
No wonder why Roman, Latin and Ottoman empires chose to build strong presence at Byzantine or Constantine or as we say today- Istanbul! It’s a city with unique geography, heritage, culture and beauty that even today people from almost every nation come and rule. Yes, they rule their time spent as a tourist! With rich history of Ancient Greek, the establishment of New Rome (Nova Roma), 600 years of Sultans (Ottoman) and liberation in 20th century- all made this city a living history. Istanbul’s culture is as vast as its history too. Thus the city of Istanbul was chosen to be the ‘European Capital of Culture 2010’.
At the first impression, the city seems to be heaven for few professionals to be wow! It’s heave for architects to see how transformation and co-existence of different architecture built the city. Alongside, how rich history has also been the rationale of shaping Istanbul. And when history is rich, there has to be an interest from many professionals. For today, putting aside the history and architecture, let’s just talk about how it feels now to be a visitor in Istanbul for couple of days.
We landed in Istanbul and were received by an unexpected gift from the season. The afternoon city was dressed in tulips of every color and shape. The deep blue water of the Sea, the skyline of famous mosques and palace created breathtaking views by the road.
We had so much to see and in so little time! A little research on what to see & how to see made our two days trip very worthwhile.
Since we approached Istanbul with a bulk of memories from Egypt, we decided to take the first evening slow. The street side restaurant gave the flavor of any European city. After having a late lunch (still can smell that Turkish kebap) we headed for the Galata bridge on the Bosphorus (the channel that divided the European and asian part of Istanbul), a must see place in Istanbul. There are convenient metro rail to all the important locations. Another interesting way is to travel by the ferries through the water channels. And taxis are easily available if one is not making a budget trip.
The Galata Bridge links the old part of Istanbul to the new. It has a rail & vehicle road like any other bridge but has series of restaurants at the bottom which makes the bridge unique. It’s a meeting place for people of all ages. People gather on top and enjoy waiting with a bait to catch fish. And at the same time people at the bottom wait at the restaurants for freshly cooked fish. During day time, if you just see carefully in the water- you may see thousands of jelly fishes are swimming all over. The adjacent area is so magnetic that we spent about three to four hours on the bridge, by the bridge, ‘this side’ and ‘that side’ of the bridge, not to mention ‘clicking’ was taking place in every now and then. There is a stunning fish market at one side of the bridge, where amazing fresh fishes were displayed and you can choose any to be grilled on spot. Just to mention, Istanbul has to be a favorite place for fish lovers and you just can’t resist the look of the whole fishing to grilling experience!
In the mean time we resisted ourselves from the bridge hangout for an hour to see the oldest tower of Istanbul- Galata Tower. This tower has a 360deg. view of the city. It comprises of a restaurant which arranges traditional belly dancing shows during dinner time with other Turkish cultural shows. Around this restaurant, this floor consists of the viewing deck for amazing view of Istanbul. A sunset view from the tower was worth walking up the hill for 30 minutes plus ten lira ticket each.
Istanbul’s old part is such a city, where you can find every street happening. Though there is a tram system, but if you have ample time a little bit of interest in walking, you can experience the ultimate tourist time. We stayed at the old part, thus walking down from Galata gave us added advantage to see those happening streets. You can’t resist yourself but going to the shops of amazing home decorating lights, ceramic souvenirs, goodies shop and of course the shop for famous sweets- Turkish delights! So we did a small shopping of goodies, sneak into some beautiful lighting shops (and asked if they mind if we take pictures only) and indulge ourselves with delights on our way back to hotel.
The nest morning we started our journey to the history. This was the time to see the famous places, camiis (mosques) and palace. Blue Mosque also known as Sultanahmet Camii (Sultan Ahmed Mosque) was on the top in our priority list of sight-seeing. As the name suggests is wrapped in intricate details of the iznic tiles. The Iznic tiles are very Turkish origin and produced as a result of modification of the Chinese porcelain. It is said that the Sultans were very fond of porcelain & hence the Turkish created Iznic tiles with a quality very close to porcelain. I apologize for my limitation of not being able to write the beauty and feelings that how beautiful it can be!
The grandeur of Aya Sophia (Hagia Sophia) makes it one of the most important buildings of architectural history. Even today the scale, the technique of setting up the dome, the openings for light, and the supports everything is considered as architectural marvel. It used to be the largest church in the world for thousand years before Seville Cathedral in Spain. Later on it was turned into a mosque during Ottoman empires but the mural of Jesus still exists on the wall of Aya Sofia. Since 1930s, this church and mosque became a museum and a witness of Roman and Ottoman era. As a second preferred places of sight-seeing, it was more than what we have expected.
After spending the half day, we have decided to plan our evening by booking tickets for Sufi Dances that has a tradition of 800 years. It’s a mix of mystic music and dance performed with the recitation from Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, which ends with a whirling dance a spiritual journey. It’s a hypnotizing experience by a group of people who practices Sufism in Turkey. Coming back to reality from the spiritual life happened through the call of our stomach, its kebap (kebab) time again.
The next morning was the last morning of our Istanbul tale. So, we chose to cover 3 other major attractions-Topkapi Palace, Grand Bazar and Bosphorus tour. Topkapi is a UNESCO world heritage site. It used to be the official residential palace for Sultans for 400 years. It was built in 1459 (initially) by Sultan Mehmed II. It used to be known as Yeni Sarayi (New Palace) but in 19th century it was named after Topkapi Gate (now lost). Once used for all royal occasion now host some amazing collection of some rare holy relics of Musilim world. Topkapi Palace contains Prophet Muhammed (pbuh)’s cloak and sword. It also kept few other prophets’ and khalifas’ swords. One of the interesting items there was the stick of Prophet Musa (since it is believed that he divided the sea with that stick). Among the other items- Prophet Muhammed’s hair, foot print and some used cascades are to be mentioned. The whole palace takes a long time to see, so just after this breathtaking experience of seeing holy relics- we have enjoyed some clicking moment with tulips and palace architecture.
Think about a market that has more than 1200 shops, 30,000 staffs, and 10+ big gates, fully covered and built in 1461 (later on extended in 17th century). It has to be the Grand Bazar of Istanbul and a must see place. It is also one of the largest and oldest markets in the world. Grand bazaar is a super bargain place. If you do not have ample time and patience for bargaining, you may just do window shopping. We were mesmerized by the shops fully loaded with different sizes of Evil Eye lockets and souvenirs. This is place is also well known for gold jewelries.
Istanbul is a very touristic city. You have all the facilities to avail in reasonable prices. So going to the Asian part through a Bosphorus journey seemed cheaper, compared to many other similar cities. There are regular ferry services that take tourist from Galata Bridge to the Asian Part of Istanbul via several key stops. You can hop in-hop off according to your choice. We have decided to be in the last point and guess made a good choice. In the April weather of Istanbul, it was a bit chilly on the Bosphorus. As our ferry was moving many beautiful building, hotels and billionaire’s villa came across. Sometime, huge Turkish red flags were just making the sights picture perfect. A big Bosphorus bridge will be on the way to Anatolia side (Asian side). Once you are close to the last destination, you will see how the channel mixes with the Black Sea (it looks blue though).
We just loved the first sight of the Asian part. Few yacht and ferries anchored around the bank and just from there open and beautifully decorated restaurants were serving freshly caught sea foods and fishes. Tourists from different countries indulging themselves with a bit of silver set noise, flavor of big yellow lemon, wine, weather and obviously the sea-side ambience. This small village has a ruin of old fort. Someday someone used to stay (sorry not to pick up the history) there and our guess was that he/she was the luckiest one of that place (maybe the staffs of the fort were too). As we walked up the hill towards the fort, looking back mistakenly once made our eyes to come off and jaws to open a bit too much. Yes, it was an amazing view of mountains and sea from the top.
Everything has a limit, so did our time to catch the ferry back to European turkey, unfortunately. After tasting one grilled fish with lemon juice and couple of chocolate ice-cream scoops our journey back passed by talking to tourists from Egypt. Looking back to back both Egypt and Turkey tour- we were thinking that every second was worth! By the way, all these are in the old part of Istanbul. But it also has a new stunning part with sky scrappers, shopping malls, modern squares and modern amenities. One of the must see from that part is Taskim Square. It’s a long road with tram line in the middle among all best brand shops from the world. Interestingly, whenever of the day you visit here, you will see thousands of people walking and walking. It’s all day full of lives mostly with young people, where we tried to cheer ourselves up as the trip was finishing the following morning. 3 days are just not enough!
Written by:
Omar Farook (Shourav)
omar.farook@hotmail.com
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